Maui

After our trip to Phoenix we got on a plane and headed to Maui to meet Cass, James and Truman at a friend's condo. They flew over there from Oahu. We had so much fun. The condo was in a great location near restaurants and shopping, and best of all, right on the beach. Cass and James had brought their book with all the best places to see, and we spent very little money and saw some really awesome things. It was a trip to remember, for sure. I have tons of pictures, so I will try to condense it down a little.

First of all, in all my excitement I forgot to use the bathroom at the airport, and anyone who knows me knows I would have to be totally desperate to use a porta potty. But desperate times call for desperate measures, so here I am at the dreaded porta potties.

Our first stop was at the Iao Needle and gardens, a very short but beautiful hike.

Truman warmed up to us a little quicker this trip. And of course he loved Bampa!

On our way to dinner, walking along the beach we saw this gorgeous sunset, and for once Dad can't claim to have taken a wondrful picture. I did this one! We ate at Leilani's, where we were introduced to Hula Pie. After that we became addicted to it, and wanted it all the time. We're talking amazingly delicious. We held ourselves back and only had it a couple more times though.

The view from our balcony:

Swimming at one of the great pools at the condo.

We hiked to some semi-secret tide pools that were really cool and saw sea cucumbers, a gobi fish, crabs and sea urchins. It was great fun.

This was taken on the road to Hana where we saw lots of beautiful waterfalls and went on some little hikes that were fun.

This little boy was so cute and so good.

This is called Chings Pond where some local show-offs dive off a cement platform by the bridge for the entertainment of the tourists.

Jeff, Cass and James did a less scary jump off a ledge lower down. Still scary though. I wouldn't do it!

Everything was so lovely.

We went to this really cool black sand beach. It was weird, you couldn't actually call it sand, it was more like gravel, but I thought it was the prettiest beach we went to.

At the entrance to a lava tube at the beach.

The last thing we did that day was hike this bambo trail before heading back to the condo. It was a really cool hike, but there were lots of mesquitos. They didn't bother me too much, but Truman had to be wrapped in a towel.

Well, this post is getting too long, so I think I'll call it part I and do a sequel in a few days. Obviously I didn't do so good with only putting a few pictures. It's so hard when you have so many, and on a trip like this you take lots. Especially when there is a cute boy around!

Another Catch-Up Post

Okay, if you recall I only got as far as July in my last post (not counting the TGIF one I just did), so I need to hurry and get caught up. During July we did lots of traveling so I will try to compress it all into a few pictures because it just takes too long to download them! The second week in July Jeff had football camp in Utah, so I went as far as Mom and Dad's and spent the week with them. Shell came down also and we had so much fun sewing and cooking together, and even got a little shopping in.

We helped Mom make some baby blankets for the new great grands she will be getting soon.

Mom mentioned that her new Temple dress was too long so I hemmed that up for her. I can't believe we had my 80 year old Mom standing on a chair. Probably not very smart......

Here we are with all the cute blankets we made.

Mom had a gift certificate for a manicure so we took her to Richfield to get her nails done. She had never had one before! She really liked it, and was so proud of her pretty nails. I always love spending time with my Mom and Dad, and wish I could do it more often!

The next week after getting home from Utah we headed to Phoenix to help Hill and Keith get moved into their new home and paint, but mostly we were there to tend the kids while they did all the hard work.

Some of the pictures are a little blurry. We need a new camera. But aren't these yahoos cute? We went on a little hike up to this thing that is at the start of their nice new subdivision. It was quite a pretty hike.

Little Finney with her Bampa.

We took the kids swimming a couple of times, and Hill came with us one of the times, since they had no power, so we couldn't paint or clean the carpets like we had planned. Oh darn!

We took the kids to see "Toy Story 3" which we have been needing an excuse to go see. We helped as much as we could, but could see that they were in a mess that would take a few weeks to finish up and felt bad to leave them. The new house is very nice, and so much bigger than their old one. They are going to love it, if they ever get it all painted!

TGIF (Thank Goodness It's Fall)

Finally it has cooled off a little. Yay for Fall, my favorite time of year! We don't really get much of a Fall around here, so we have to have "fake" ones like this:

And this:

We kind of have to create our own little Fall-ness. Sad huh?